Healing
by Grav
Summary: Of these things speak, Immortal One, And tell the tale again in our time. DanielJanet. Part 4 of "After Great Pain". Isis nominee.


AN: And here at last is the final installment of "After Great Pain". If you have not read the first three, I really suggest that you do. "Mourning" can be found at www geocities com/gravity not included/sg1 html (spaces represent full stops, except between 'gravity', 'not', and 'included' where they are underscores), and "Grief" and "Reconciliation" are on my Stories Authored list. 

I need to thank Isabelle Ashe for letting me take her idea and run away with it. I never planned it to go further than "Grief", but we all know how fics work.

Spoilers: Evolution Part II and back.

Disclaimer: How do I not own Stargate? Let me count the ways….

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**Healing**

To her credit, Janet managed to complete his round of inoculations before her hands began to shake. Even then, the needle was on the tray and her hands were in her pockets so quickly that Jack barely had time to notice.

"We're done, Colonel," Janet said, hoping she sounded more like a doctor and less like the edge of a breakdown. "If you can be made immune to it, you're immune."

"Thanks doc." Jack got to his feet. "You know, the mission – "

"No!" Janet cut him off. "I don't want to know what governments are involved or the histories of the factions or the survival rate of their hostages. Just…just bring him home."

"So you can kill him yourself?" He said it gently.

Janet swallowed around the large lump in her throat that was suddenly making it so very difficult to breathe.

"Something like that, sir."

"Yes ma'am." Jack gave her a mock salute and left the infirmary.

Janet managed to get all the way into her office and shut the door before her legs gave way beneath her.

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"Saving you ass," said Jack, seemingly apropos of nothing.

"What?" Daniel looked back from the window. He had never been so happy to see the Rockies in his entire life.

"What I was doing in Honduras. I was saving your ass."

"Oh. That." Daniel returned his attention to the window.

"Yes. That."

"You know," said Daniel with a glance back over his shoulder at the sleeping Dr. Lee, "I'd actually figured that out for myself."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"When I shot the commandoes?"

"No, actually, when I wasn't hacked to pieces by a maniac under the influence of a super sarcophagus and wielding a machete."

"Oh. That."

"Yes. That." Daniel turned back to look at Jack. "Thank you."

"I was acting under orders."

"Well yeah, and I'll thank Hammond when I see him."

"The orders didn't come from Hammond, Daniel."

Now he had Daniel's complete attention. Since the jungle, Daniel had been, understandably, rather unfocused. Now Jack could see a bit of the spark back in his friend's eyes. The jeep entered the tunnel that led into Cheyenne Mountain, and by the time Jack's eyes had adjusted to the light, Daniel had gone back to the window, even though there was nothing to see.

"Whose then?" Jack could see Daniel's reflection in the window, and knew that Daniel had an inkling as to what the answer was.

"Janet's." The reflection blinked.

"What did she – "

"No, Daniel," said Jack, reaching to wake Lee. "Ask her yourself."

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Everything in the infirmary was ready to receive two patients suffering from exhaustion, dehydration, electric shock and one gunshot wound, with one small exception. Dr. Warner had not arrived yet, and Janet was feeling very much incapable of treating Daniel Jackson. In his defense, Warner had not even been on call this weekend, although at the SGC one never knew when that call might come. The doors to the infirmary were opened and Jack O'Neill strode into the room. A team of medics, two patients and, thankfully, Warner, who had apparently met them in the elevator, followed him. Warner took one look at Daniel's leg and rushed him off to surgery, mumbling something under his breath about jungle medicine and various tropical infections that Janet really did not want to hear about as he went.

She treated Dr. Lee almost mechanically. To the casual observer, she looked merely properly detached, but Jack knew she was distracted as hell. He'd done his best with Daniel's field dressing, and neither of the archaeologists had complained. Of course, Daniel never complained and Lee had slept almost the entire way home. Before thirty minutes had elapsed, Lee was on a series of IV drips and sleeping again, Janet had finished her paperwork, and Jack was worried she'd wear a hole in the floor with her pacing. Years of experience had taught Jack that words would be useless, so he took Janet by the shoulders and marched her into her office, shutting the door behind him.

"Colonel – "

"Save it, doc. And sit down before you collapse."

Janet leaned back against her desk. Jack got a glass of water from the cooler and handed it to her.

"Daniel will be fine. The shot was a through and through, and Warner'll have him stitched up in no time."

"But the infections – "

"I know, Fraiser. And if I know, then you can bet your ass Warner does. Just…do yourself a favour."

"What, sir?"

"When you talk to him, don't do it here." Jack took her hand and she looked up at him. "The Mountain is crazy Janet. Take him someplace sane."

Janet nodded.

"I'll tell one of your nurses to come and get you when he's awake. "Jack shrugged apologetically. "Carter and Teal'c are still out there and Hammond needs me…"

Janet took several deep breaths and walked around her desk to sit in her chair. Jack watched while she began to sort through her papers, and waited until she began to write before taking his leave. Janet counted to fifteen to make sure he wasn't coming back, before she put her head on her desk and, for the first time in months, she let herself cry for Daniel Jackson.

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Daniel stood on the front porch for almost a full minute before ringing the bell. He'd woken up after his surgery to find her sitting next to him, waiting. She'd already changed to go home, and he realized that he had no idea what time it was in Colorado.

She had quickly examined him, her behaviour absolutely professional, but after she poured him a glass of water and set it close by, she'd taken his hand. She spoke softly, calmly, and told him that when he was released, and the rest of SG-1 was home safely, he should come to her house, regardless of the hour. Before he had quite finished processing what she had said, she vanished and he fell back to sleep with his mind in a whirl to the tune of his own heart rate monitor.

It was almost one o'clock in the morning, so he was not surprised that she answered the door in her pajamas. They were dark green and her hair fell softly around her face and her feet were bare, and he was reminded how very small and perfect she was without shoes. She smiled and stood back, letting him into her house. He hung his coat on a free hook in her pleasantly cluttered front hall, and followed her into the living room.

There was a fire in the hearth. It snapped and crackled and filled the room with the scent of pine and a ruddy, flickering light. Janet had taken a seat on the sofa and picked up a pair of knitting needles with the beginnings of something green on them.

She said nothing, and he stayed in the middle of the room. He stared openly at her as she counted stitches, committing every detail about her, about this moment to memory because he had no idea what was coming next.

"When did you start wearing flannel pajamas?" he asked, finally finding something relatively safe to speak about.

"I get cold." It was almost an invitation. Almost, but not quite. So much for small talk.

He glanced away from her, back to the fire. The pictures he saw n the mantelpiece conjured memories out of nothing. He looked at her bookshelf and realized with a flash that he had left many of his favourite volumes with her. Memory, which had come to him in pieces and scattered details for months suddenly flooded his mind. He reached out one hand and removed a book from its place on the shelf.

"If I remember correctly," he began, praying that he did," The last time you knit something, I read you this. We raced to see which of us would finish first. You won."

"Would you like to try again?" She wasn't talking about blankets or books and he knew it.

He smiled and sat beside her on the sofa. Shyly, she leaned against him, keeping both hands free and never wavering in the rhythm of her stitches. He opened the book.

"Speak, Memory, of the cunning hero,  
The wanderer, blown off course time and again.  
Speak of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped,  
The suffering deep in his heart.  
Of these things speak, Immortal One,  
And tell the tale again in our time."

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AN: Well, that's as happy as it's going to get. Seriously though, I will totally judge my relationships by the person whom I deem worthy to keep my copies of "The Lord of the Rings" in his house.

The poem at the end are the first few lines of Homer's "The Odyssey", which I highly recommend and did not write myself.

What did you think?


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